Thursday, August 06, 2015

Say it, sister

After decades of failed military intervention in Iraq, the U.S. must
now assume its humanitarian and diplomatic responsibilities. We ask
Racine citizens to join us in urging the administration and Congress to
significantly increase funding to support internally displaced
populations and Iraqi refugees struggling in nearby countries. Implore
them to exert leadership in the world community's responsibility to
protect vulnerable populations in Iraq, since the Iraqi government seems
unable or unwilling to do so.Tell your congressional
representatives you reject any U.S. military intervention in Iraq that
is not accompanied by pressure on the Iraqi government to adopt a more
equitable power-sharing arrangement. Ask for a comprehensive arms
embargo on Iraq and the region and for a united global response —
through the efforts of the U.N. Security Council — to the threat posed
by the Islamic state.

Wednesday, August 6, 2015. Chaos and violence continue, Barack invokes the Iraq War to sell his Iran deal, and much more.

Dripping with desperation, US President Barack Obama attempted to sell his proposed deal with Iraq today.

Instead of explaining what was in the deal and how this would be good
for the United States and the world, Barack elected to traffic in fear
and bitchery.

The Hindu reports:President Barack Obama warned Congress that rejecting the nuclear
agreement with Iran would be the worst mistake since the invasion of
Iraq and would lead to "another war" in the Middle East.

Fear and lies, it was 2002 all over again.

Agree with me, he insisted, or there will be war.

Trust me, he argued, and that what I say is true because, after all, I just said it.

He didn't prove anything and basic fact checks of his statements tended to expose one lie after another.

“This deal is not just the best choice among alternatives—this is the
strongest non-proliferation agreement ever.” —President Obama

Except, of course, for the Nonproliferation Treaty! if its parties
were to comply with it. (I'm looking at you, President Obama.)

The President's tweets -- tweeted by someone other than the President
of course -- came during a speech he gave at American University, from
which a transcript will likely be posted on the White House website.

Obama, in truth, has zero evidence of Iran pursuing a nuclear weapon.
Zero. None. The claim that he halted a nuclear weapons program in Iran
is outrageous -- as crazy as Dick Cheney's claim that Iraq had nuclear
weapons.

Obama might claim he was only suggesting he'd halted a nuclear ENERGY
program, but the reader who would put that interpretation on his
statement, and combine it with an understanding that Iran's program has
been exclusively for energy, has got to be rare, given the propaganda
being pushed by Obama, his supporters, and his opponents.

Remarkably, neither the advocates of war, nor the momentary fans of
diplomacy, will point out that Iran has never threatened the United
States and has no nuclear weapons program.

Yes, it was 2002 all over again as Barack, like Bully Boy Bush before
him, used the threat of wars to try to push through what he wanted.
Fear mongering. FITS News observes:

“I know it’s easy to play on people’s
fears, to magnify threats … but none of these arguments hold up,” Obama
said during an address at American University.Really? All we know is Iran’s ruler – Hassan Rouhani – referred to the deal Obama negotiated as an “answered prayer.” That can’t be good.More to the point: In the same speech Obama blasted critics for
“playing on people’s fears,” he engaged in … wait for it … the exact
same fearmongering.“Let’s not mince words,” Obama said. “The choice we face is
ultimately between diplomacy or some form of war. Maybe not tomorrow,
maybe not three months from now, but soon.”

It was Bully Boy Bush who helped hardened divisions in the United States
with 'you're either with us or against us' nonsense which failed to
recognize that people could have honest disagreements.

Barack was supposed to usher in change.

He was going to do so much for the public dialogue.

He would be able to do this, you may remember, because he was not of the
baby boom. (He actually is by a baby boomer by most definitions of the
generation.)

He would be able to bridge the divide, dismiss the "Tom Hayden Democrats," and allow for better dialogue.

That was the argument.

Didn't hold up, but that was the argument.

Kevin Liptak (CNN) points out, "He declared that lawmakers risk damaging American credibility if they
vote to scuttle the deal and equated them with those who pushed for war
with Iraq -- and with the mullahs in Iran."

So if you opposed the deal, you are in league with the mullahs?

And the Legion of Doom as well?

Why not include them because this speech was the most idiotic political speech since Lois Griffin ran for mayor of Quahog on Family Guy
(and, using Brian's advice, Lois decided to repeatedly invoke 9/11) and
gave speeches while seeking the office and after being elected.

Attempting to persuade citizens to support a tax hike, Lois declares at
one point, "We have intelligence that suggests that Hitler is plotting
with -- with the Legion of Doom to assassinate Jesus using the lake as a
base."

That assertion would have fit right in with the ones Barack made today.

Meanwhile, Barack worked overtime to use Iraq to justify his deal with Iran.

Obama’s use of the Iraq War as a political cudgel against opponents
of the deal carries clear risks for the president. Obama has
consistently taken public credit for bringing the long and deeply
unpopular Iraq War to what he has called a responsible
end, but the Iraqi Army disintegrated last year in the face of the
Islamic State, and the militants have conquered vast swaths of the
country. Many critics — including prominent Democrats and an array of
current and retired senior military commanders — say that Obama’s rush
to withdraw American forces helped pave the way for the rise of the
Islamic State.In recent months, Obama has been forced to send roughly 3,000 U.S.
troops to train Iraqi forces and tribal fighters to take on the militant
group. The Pentagon has also spent almost one full year bombing Islamic
State targets in both Iraq and Syria.

Barack's sudden concern over those who supported the Iraq War has never
resulted in a litmus test for his own Cabinet. Hillary Clinton, John
Kerry, and many others who supported the Iraq War have been offered
posts by Barack but those who opposed the war -- US House Rep Maxine
Waters, Dennis Kuccinich, etc -- have not been offered Cabinet posts.

On the Republican side, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham
supported the Iraq War. Today, the two issued the following
joint-statement:

Aug052015

Washington, D.C.­– U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ)
and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) today released the following statement
President Obama’s remarks on the Iran nuclear agreement at American
University in Washington, DC:“President Obama's speech today is just another example of his
reliance on endless strawmen to divert attention from his failed
policies. It is particularly galling to hear the President try to defend
his nuclear agreement with Iran by claiming that its critics also
supported the war in Iraq. Having presided over the collapse of our
hard-won gains in Iraq, the rise of the most threatening terrorist army
in the world, the most devastating civil war and humanitarian
catastrophe in generations in Syria, the spread of conflict and
radicalism across the Middle East and much of Africa, a failed reset
with Russia, and escalating cyber attacks and other acts of aggression
for which our adversaries pay no price, the President should not throw
stones from his glass house.“In addition to jousting with strawmen, the President also repeated
his reliance on false choices. No one believes that military force can
or should solve all problems. No one believes that diplomacy, including
diplomacy with adversaries, is tantamount to weakness. What we object to
is the President's lack of realism – his ideological belief that
diplomacy is good and force is bad, which has repeatedly resulted either
in failed deals or bad deals. The alternative to this deal was never
war; it was greater pressure on Iran and insistence on a better
agreement.“President Obama’s deal with Iran empowers one of our chief
antagonists and the world’s most radical Islamist regime with a pathway
to the bomb, missiles to deliver it, money to pay for it, and the means
to acquire a new military arsenal. Instead of dismantling Iran’s nuclear
program, this agreement would lock it in place. Instead of weakening
this radical regime, a regime with American blood on its hand, this
agreement would make Iran stronger. Before the deal, Iran was able to
destabilize Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. After this deal, Iran’s
power in the region will only be enhanced as it ultimately becomes a
member of the nuclear club. A more powerful Iran with a bomb in the
Ayatollah’s hands is a direct threat to the United States and an
existential threat to our allies in Israel.“President Obama clearly does not understand the Middle East and has
made one blunder after another. He was wrong when he ignored sound
military advice to leave a residual force in Iraq. He was wrong when he
turned down the advice of his national security team when they urged him
to help Free Syrian Army fighters when it could have made a difference.
He was wrong when he failed to enforce his own red lines against Bashar
Assad. He was wrong when he declared ISIL a ‘JV team.’ He was wrong
when he built a presidential campaign around a message of ‘Bin Laden is
dead and al Qaeda is decimated.’ And he is wrong about this deal with
Iran.“Those of us who have warned President Obama about his past mistakes
are warning him again about the consequences of this deal with Iran. We
hope the American people realize this deal should be rejected and will
weigh in to have their voice heard.”

###

The press was full on whore mode as evidenced by crap like that churned out by Margaret Talev and Toluse Olorunnipa:Obama rode to the White House in 2008 on his early, vocal and mostly
lonely opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. More than a
decade later, he says the fight over the Iran deal is with the same
group of neoconservative politicians and commentators who beat the drum
for war over diplomacy to meet what turned out to be a non-existent
threat in Iraq.

I will never understand the mentality of a dirty whore who, all these years later, still wants to whore on this topic.

Barack gave a speech to a tiny group of people in 2002 where he was
against going to war in Iraq. And then he dropped that opposition. I
know it for a fact because as Elaine
and I have noted for years now (before he got into the White House) we
were face to face with him when he was running for the US Senate, sold
on him by friends, ready to write checks for the maximum donations
legally permitted when, during our face time, he insisted that the US
military was in Iraq now so opposition no longer mattered. He was for
the war now. We did not donate, we did not stick around. We
immediately walked out on the fake ass Barack and his fake ass
supporters.

Margaret Talev once reported for Knight Ridder. Today she's just a dirty whore -- one of many.

Let's drop back to the January 9, 2008 snapshot
when Socialist Matthew Rothschild, then still posing as a Democrat
publicly, felt the need to lash out at Bill Clinton for rightly noting
that Barack's Iraq reputation was a "fairy tale:"

He opposed the war in Iraq, and spoke against it
during a rally in Chicago in the fall of 2002. He said then that he saw
no evidence that Iraq had unconventional weapons that posed a threat, or
of any link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

In a recent interview, he declined to criticize
Senators Kerry and Edwards for voting to authorize the war, although he
said he would not have done the same based on the information he had at
the time.

"But, I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports,"
Mr. Obama said. "What would I have done? I don't know. What I know is
that from my vantage point the case was not made."

"What would I have done?"

"I don't know."

Speaking to Remnick:

I think what people might point to is our different assessments of the
war in Iraq, although I’m always careful to say that I was not in the
Senate, so perhaps the reason I thought it was such a bad idea was that I
didn’t have the benefit of U.S. intelligence. And, for those who did,
it might have led to a different set of choices. So that might be
something that sort of is obvious. But, again, we were in different
circumstances at that time: I was running for the U.S. Senate, she had
to take a vote, and casting votes is always a difficult test.

Didn't know what he would have done then.

But today whores like Margaret let him pretend to have been opposed
to the Iraq War and steady and consistent in that opposition.

The president touted his supposed anti-war credentials, citing his
opposition to the Iraq invasion, which he used to appeal to anti-war and
anti-Bush sentiment in his 2008 election campaign. He did not bother to
square this pretense with his record in office—continuing the Iraq
bloodbath for another two years after coming to power, massively
expanding the war in Afghanistan, organizing the war for regime-change
that left Libya in a permanent state of chaos, and orchestrating a
catastrophic civil war for regime-change in Syria.Over the past year, he has launched a new war in Iraq, initiated the
bombing of Syria and backed a murderous war by Saudi Arabia in Yemen.
Just days before his speech at American University, he backed the
carving out of a “buffer zone” in Syria by Turkish forces and sanctioned
US air strikes against Syrian government forces in support of US-funded
and trained mercenaries operating in the country.

The Pentagon announced Wednesday about
1,250 soldiers from Fort Drum, New York, will rotate to Iraq to back the
U.S. intervention against the Islamic State.

The soldiers, from 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, will deploy in support of Operation Inherent Resolve.

"These are routine rotations to replace
personnel that are already there," Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff
Davis said in a briefing on Wednesday.

But he had the nerve to hide behind Iraq today?

The point of today's speech? Raf Sanchez (Telegraph of London) explains, "The speech is part of an all-out White House lobbying effort to convince
Democratic members of Congress to support the deal in a vote in
September."

The unanswered question is whether that
framing -- viewed even by some supporters of the deal as overly
simplistic -- will be effective in swaying enough votes in Congress to,
at a minimum, sustain a veto on any measure objecting to the accord.

"I
don't think that aids the cause," Sen. Angus King, an independent who
caucuses with Democrats and came out in favor of the deal Wednesday,
said of Obama's "common cause" language. "In fact, I think there are
Republicans that are really thinking hard about this agreement. I was
talking to one this afternoon. And I don't think it helps."

Nothing can be done with regards to this or that in Iraq because (a)
Iran consumes all the White House's time and attention and (b) and this
deal was supposed to have been wrapped up in March continues to eat all
up all the oxygen in the room.